Digital Coupon Redemption
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
One of the things delaying more use of mobile marketing coupons is the fact that many, if not most, stores do not yet have the ability to read them.
However, M-Dot Network, located in Erie, Pennsylvania, has created a platform which redeems digital coupons in real time, lessening the burden of coupon validation at check-out, speeding up check-out and reducing redemption error rates.
The M-Dot platform is a bridge which connects any number of existing digital consumer touch points, notably the Internet and mobile phone, into a retailer’s point-of-sale system without the expense of additional in-store hardware. It gives retailers the benefit of redeeming offers from any number of digital coupon issuers with only one single point of integration.
“Our real-time processing technology enables retailers to own and manage their own pipeline of digital coupons and offers, safely and securely,” says Bill Catania, CEO of M-Dot.
Further, the M-Dot Network helps retailers and product manufacturers fight coupon fraud as each coupon redemption is aligned with a valid shopper identification and the corresponding purchase at the time a coupon is redeemed.
It works like this: Consumers select and receive digital offers on a participating retailer’s Web site, on a retailer-branded mobile application provided by M-Dot, or directly from the digital coupon issuer. Regardless of coupon issuance, consumers redeem all coupons in real-time by swiping their Retailer Shopper/Club Card or entering their phone number at check-out. All of the shopper’s coupons are redeemed during the same transaction within about one tenth of a second.
M-Dot Network’s patent pending message broker software controls all coupon redemption messages between the retailer POS and M-Dot Network’s central servers. M-Dot Network’s compression technology recognizes what has been purchased by the shopper and immediately sends a message to its central server for validation of eligible coupons for the purchase. A message is then immediately sent back to the retailer where the purchase price is adjusted for the shopper based on the sum of their valid coupons. .
“There has been great progress in the development of mobile and location based technologies with very little success in converting those technologies into real-time point-of-sale based redemption,” says Catania. “M-Dot Network has addressed those challenges with our secure high speed transaction network and the stage is now set for real-time actionable media.”
The company has, to date, booked a very large national retailer but cannot release the name until its program is launched in Jan., 2010.
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